One of the more grueling and dispiriting parts of the job application process last year was “tailoring” cover letters for specific applications. Some general rules, like length and formatting (2 pages, single-spaced) apply to all cover letters, and there are some sections you can reuse across applications. However, writing an effective cover letter requires you to match your experience and interests with the needs of the institution. The last paragraph of the letter is usually specific to each job and gives an explanation of how you will contribute to that particular institution, but it’s also important to edit the sections on research and teaching to fit the description of the position in the job ad and whatever you can find out about the hiring department through your own research.

Early in the application cycle, it was exciting to see new ads come out, analyze the differences between them, and imagine myself working at these institutions. I got to the point, though, where I couldn’t look at a job ad without feeling a twinge of nausea. Repeating this act of hopeful imagination over and over again was tiring, even sickening. Much more so when it felt unlikely that any of these imaginary possibilities would come to pass. It made me grateful for the several months I had before the market kicked into full-swing again.

Since, then, I’ve spent more time reflecting on and defining my professional identity, trying to work out what makes me not just another graduate student. One thing I’ve tried to work out is the difference between my dissertation as a coherent whole that myself and those who know the project best can see developing and as a bundle of themes of interventions, each of which may be more or less interesting to a given reader. Instead of waiting for jobs to come out to tailor descriptions of my research, I’ve pre-written paragraphs that describe my project in different ways by varying the focus on time period, themes, and theoretical or empirical interventions. My last year of writing, including drafting my introduction and my (failed) attempts at cover letters, has helped with this process. I feel more confident in the fact that the value of my project exceeds what I can fit into one or two paragraphs and that what I have room to explain can nevertheless be an effective description of my research and worthy of readers’ attention. Rather than trying to sell myself to institutions on a case-by-case basis, I think I’ve taken more control over the complexity of my academic profile and am in a better position to gauge how my qualities might match what different institutions are looking for.

This focus on self-definition fits well with the oft-shared advice that grad school should not be viewed as a competition and that comparing oneself to others is destructive. By and large, graduate programs have changed such that graduate students aren’t pitted against each other for at least the bulk of their funding, and the moral, mental, and material benefits of maximizing cooperation outweigh the risks of losing out to a colleague. Students come into the program in different places, and PhD trajectories are so diverse that it’s really not productive to hold yourself up against a colleague you imagine to be the ideal model of a PhD student (whether they actually are or not).

But…

Taking a glace at what your colleagues are doing isn’t a bad idea. It can be a good way to learn more about the sorts of things everyone needs to do: teaching, applying for fellowships, publishing, etc. Going through grad school with blinders on and assuming that your own instincts will, by themselves, produce the best results for you is a terrible idea. Moreover, there is a lot of competition in grad school, especially when you get to the job market. This competition rarely pits you directly against people you know, but there are real people out there getting the jobs you aren’t. It behooves you, then, to know what you need in your application arsenal to be competitive.

The challenge as I see it is that “competitiveness” can consist of so many different things that it’s effectively impossible to make entirely well-informed choices about how to prepare yourself for the market earlier in graduate school. Sure, the general terms are simple: do good research, win grants, gain teaching experience. What constitutes “good” research or valuable teaching experience will vary greatly, though. The sensible option would be to try to do a bit of everything. For example, for someone in my field that would mean teaching courses in all periods of Chinese history, broader courses on East Asia, topical East Asia courses, all periods of world history, thematic courses like that that would be part of a core/liberal arts curriculum, historical methodology, writing, etc. And it’s especially important to teach your own course rather than just being a teaching assistant. These types of teaching opportunities don’t necessarily fall into your lap – some require careful preparation through cultivating relationships and gaining initial experience. It’s simply impossible to do them all, and it’s very likely that the applicant pools for the majority of positions to which you apply will contain at least one (and likely more) people who possess advantages that you do not.

Ideally, we’d tell graduate students to start preparing for the job market early on by developing their own sense of professional identity and coupling that with experience and skills that would make them attractive candidates. The reality, though, is that a clear-cut sense of identity isn’t enough, and there are so many kinds of credentials you can get and could need that Pokemon-like “gotta catch ’em all” chase is futile. As a result, the academic job market places a strange mix of demands on PhD students: cultivate a personal identity, equip yourself with as many tools as you possibly can, but also come to terms with what you are not and what you do not possess. That’s not an entirely positive attitude, but it’s one that I think is well-adapted to the Swiss army knife fight that is the academic job market.